>Shear has gotten the attention of Maryland state legislators, who have proposed two separate bills aimed at banning social media access by schools and potential employers.
Why is this specifically targeted at social media? No one should request copies of people's private keys as part of any routine interview process. This is no different from asking for a copy of someone's PO box key, and the law should also clearly say that that is illegal (if it isn't already?)
I'm no less disturbed by this than anyone else, but you do not truly own your Facebook account in the way that you would own a PO box.
Your data belongs to Facebook, not to you. Sad, but true.
Edit: (submitted too soon) I'm sure there's something legally dubious about requesting private keys in this way, but the PO box example was a clear reminder to me about how we wrongly think of our data on private services as "ours".
Really, I think I'm being charitable towards the schools with my interpretation. If we look at it from the "Facebook owns your data" perspective, then you have no right to give them your keys even if you honestly want to, because that's against Facebook's TOS and the employer/school could be charged with felony unauthorized use of computing resources, aka hacking.
Really, I'm probably trying to hard. This is phishing, plain and simple, and should be treated as such.
Facebook's "ownership" of your data is no different from that of Yahoo! Mail, GMail, cell phone companies, landline phone companies, the postal service, Western Union, and all the other organizations people been sending messages through for hundreds of years. (Skype being P2P and encrypted might make it an exception...)
Facebook has no more or less access to/ownership of your life than your ISP and cell phone company.
Why is this specifically targeted at social media? No one should request copies of people's private keys as part of any routine interview process. This is no different from asking for a copy of someone's PO box key, and the law should also clearly say that that is illegal (if it isn't already?)